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Frontier Airlines tabs Cleveland as newest focus city

Frontier Airlines will add six new destinations from Cleveland this summer. Frontier's new destinations from Cleveland will be Atlanta; Fort Lauderdale; Fort Myers, Fla.; Phoenix; Raleigh-Durham and Tampa.

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Frontier Airlines will add six new destinations from Cleveland this summer, establishing a "focus city" at the same time that United begins to dismantle its longtime hub there.

Frontier's new destinations from Cleveland will be Atlanta; Fort Lauderdale; Fort Myers, Fla.; Phoenix; Raleigh-Durham and Tampa. Frontier will offer five weekly flights to Atlanta beginning June 13. The airline will fly three flights a week to the other five destinations. The Phoenix service will be seasonal, according to The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.

Frontier will fly 168-seat Airbus A320 jets on all six of the new routes.

When the new routes begin, Frontier will offer nonstop service to 12 destinations from Cleveland. The carrier currently flies from Cleveland to its bases in Denver and Trenton, N.J. Nonstop service to Seattle and Orlando will begin this June. Frontier also flies from Cleveland to Cancun, Mexico, and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic as part of its partnership with Apple Vacations.

Daniel Shurz, Frontier's SVP - Commercial, confirmed to Today in the Sky that the low-cost carrier now considers Cleveland to be one of its focus cities. Frontier operates its busiest hub in Denver but also has focus cities in Trenton, N.J., and Wilmington, Del.

United announced in early February that would reduce its number of daily Cleveland flights by about 60%, keeping most of its "mainline" flights at but slashing about 70% of those flown by the company's United Express regional partners.

Once all of the cuts are phased in by June, United's Cleveland schedule will have dropped from about 199 daily departures to 72.

Given that background, any new airline service is welcome news to Cleveland airport officials -- even if it doesn't come close to backfilling all of the capacity the United is pulling down there.

Ricky Smith, director at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, touted Frontier's new routes and suggested Clevelanders will enjoy lower fares as low-cost carrier Frontier picks up market share in Cleveland.

"Now that we've moved beyond this hub environment, this community will begin to enjoy low fares like they've never had before," Ricky Smith, director at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, says to The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.

The new routes aren't the first to be announced since United's announcement.

Frontier also followed United's news by announcing its own new routes, saying service to Orlando and Seattle would begin in mid-June. The Seattle route would backfill seasonal service that United had previously operated from Cleveland during the summer season.